The overhead lights illuminate every nook and cranny in the operating room with a harsh white light. "Iodine" the surgeon announces, and his attending nurse hands him an iodine soaked swab without wasting a second. Like a well choreographed dance, she reaches for the tool she knows the surgeon will need next, precisely as he announces "trephine" and the process begins to methodically remove enough skull to effectively drain an epidural hematoma, reduce the pressure on the brain, and prevent coma or death.

It is undeniable that the movement and rhythm of an operating room is a sort of dance, where every performer knows their role, their steps, and their function in performing the piece. Any misstep could result in disastrous consequences, and it is here that medical packaging comes into play. At the moment the surgeon announces what he needs to his or her attending nurses, speed and accuracy are absolutely essential. While the engineering and design of medical packaging might at first seem unrelated to the efficacy of an O.R. team, they are in fact much more.

If the tools needed in any given procedure are contained in packaging that is unintuitive, hard to work with, and difficult to handle, it could result in a variety of problems. If it’s hard to open, the surgeon and the patient must wait valuable seconds (or even minutes) to gain access to the potentially life saving tools the package contains. Or, if the package is hard to handle, there’s the risk of dropping or damaging the expensive tools, risking an even longer wait for the tools needed to complete the operation.

In every case, effective and intuitive medical packaging designed with the rhythm of the operating room in mind enhances the level of care delivered to the patient while also improving the outcome of the procedure. Today, medical packaging is designed and engineered with all of these factors in mind. Typically, custom medical packaging is designed to be sterile, easy to use, and highly protective.

Medical packaging is typically manufactured by foam compression molding or custom plastic thermoforming. Particularly useful for medical packaging are materials such as closed-cell foam, which is resistant to water, mildew, moisture, and bacteria – making it especially suitable for sterile environments. In many other cases, thermoformed plastic medical packaging is also used quite frequently.

So next time you see a television show where a surgeon is quickly requesting tool after tool, think about what makes it possible to quickly and accurately bring those tools from storage, to O.R., to the surgeon’s capable hands.